When Chambersburg plays York on Saturday in a District 3 Class AAAA quarterfinal, one thing will have to be different for the Trojans to have a fighting chance - the bench will have to be more of a factor.

In a 40-37 win over Cedar Crest in the first round Wednesday night at CASHS Field House, the only five players who scored for the Trojans were the starters. The four substitutes who did get in the game were not in for long.

"We were disappointed with the bench," Chambersburg coach Beau Gantz said. "We were up by seven late in the second and we tried to give some guys a break, but by halftime they had taken the lead.

"I know it's tough to come in off the bench, but those kids get a lot of time in practice. When you're in the playoffs, you have to be able to play more kids."

Interestingly enough, the Falcons also got zero points from their bench.

INTIMIDATION: With 1:43 left in the game, Cedar Crest's Andrew Eudy, who was the game's high scorer with 22 points, took a short shot inside that was swiped away by the Trojans' 6-foot-8 Mitch Stahl. But the official on the back side called it goaltending and that made it 36-31 in Chambersburg's favor.

Even if he didn't agree with the call, Gantz felt it was a huge play in his team's favor.

"We want Mitch to go after those shots and I don't mind if he gets called for goaltending on some of them," Gantz said. "If you noticed, after that they missed a couple of layups that they came up a little short on.

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Falcons coach Tom Smith agreed.

"We missed some layups at the end we typically make," Smith said. "Give credit to their size and length."

LOW SCORE: When two teams combine for 77 points, your first conclusion would be that it was slow-paced game. In this case, you'd be wrong.

It was more about both defenses playing well and the offenses had to work very hard to get even decent shots. In addition, the officials were not calling a lot of ticky-tack fouls (to their credit), so whistles weren't stopping play very often.

With a 7 p.m. start, the game was over by 8:20.

"I definitely did not expect that kind of game," Trojan guard Kellen Williams said. "It seemed a lot slower than it was (because of the low score)."

Smith said, "When you hold a team to 40 points, you think you should win. But we just had a tough time scoring. They dug in and defended well."

SHUT DOWN: Killian Klopp came in as the Falcons' top scorer, but he scored only seven points, four in the final few minutes when it was desperation time.

Gantz said before the game he was expecting to put Williams on Klopp, but instead the assignment went to Tay Charles.

"We had to mark No. 12 (Klopp), who is a good shooter, and I was mostly guarding him," Charles said. "We tried to deny him the ball."

Chambersburg played sort of a passive defense in the first half, but cranked up the intensity in the second half with more traps and double teams, especially out front.

"We were supposed to be putting pressure on them the whole game, but for some reason we didn't do it much until the second half," Charles said.

The Trojans guarded the perimeter so well that the Falcons took fewer than five 3-pointers in the game.

NOTES: Eudy said the officials were letting physical play go on inside, and that was fine with him: "It was fun out there," he said Charles said he was impressed with the play of Falcon freshman Evan Horn, who nearly hit the game-tying shot and had eight rebounds: "He played like he was a senior," Charles said Cedar Crest took only six foul shots in the entire game, and all 14 of Chambersburg's came in the final quarter Williams led the Trojans with eight boards.

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Ed Gotwals can be reached at 262-4755 and egotwals@publicopinionnews.com.